Deficit Spending

[trausch]

I would like to some more sophisticated economics in CIV games. Nothing too fancy to complicate the game.

How about a wonder called "deficit spending" which allows you to borrow money. The wonder would be unlocked later in the game roughly around the time you enter the modern age. You have to borrow it from either your citizens or other countries and your interest rate depends on the strength of your economy. If you lend it, it would be a great way to make some extra money on the interest payment.

This could be useful during game play to help fund a war or pay for social programs.

To keep players in check, depending on your government, unhappiness could depend on your GDP to Debt Ratio. It would be fun to see countries decline when they take on too much debt and have them beg for money to be bailed out. Countries with lots of debt may also be more inclined to go to war. If you are heavily invested in a country, you are less likely to invade them if you will loose all your money.

 

[trausch]

Just to add to my original post. The country which unlocks the "deficit spending" wonder could also become the worlds reserve currency and the game can switch from a gold to a currency based system. This would allow for many new units like "bankers" and "investors" and allow you to influence other civs in the modern era through means other than war.

 

[Set]

that would be cool and might make late game diplomacy a little more interesting but the Ai would have to handle it really well or every Ai in the game would be begging for money. Also defecit spending does not really contribute much to a civilazations collapse or anything when you declare yourself bankrupt all that happens is nobody will lend you money again. Also by the modern era when this wonder would appear my money is always in the tens of thousands so it would be kind of useless if your economy is any good at all.

welcome to cfc traush

 

[Janig]

I agree that it looks like a good idea for diplomacy, but then ive never played civ5. who knows maybe theyve already implemented it

 

[trausch]

that would be cool and might make late game diplomacy a little more interesting but the Ai would have to handle it really well or every Ai in the game would be begging for money. Also defecit spending does not really contribute much to a civilazations collapse or anything when you declare yourself bankrupt all that happens is nobody will lend you money again. Also by the modern era when this wonder would appear my money is always in the tens of thousands so it would be kind of useless if your economy is any good at all.

welcome to cfc traush

Hmmmm, every civ would be begging for money. Sounds pretty realistic to me.

 

[awesome]

deficit spending definitely contributes to collapse, or at least changes in government.
let's say you don't have any money and nobody wants to lend it to you. then you decide to raise your taxes and that makes your citizens rebel, especially if they're overseas colonies.
or let's say that you do get loans from other countries but you have so many loans that you decide to default on them and your creditors decide to conquer you for your repayment.
these are just off the top of my head, but both of these have happened.

 

[shootersharkey]

What if instead of another wonder, this feature was unlocked by a "Central Bank" corporation? "Reserve Bankers" could be produced and moved around to spread the CB. A civ could deficit spend up to a certain amount based on the number of CB's spread around, and then "Deficit Weariness" could kick in? Obviously, gold resources could be the basis resources for the CB...

 

[quintus5]

This sounds like a mod to me.

 

[Ahriman]

What is the design goal here? This sounds like needless complexity, that would be a real turn-off for many players. This is Civilization, not SimBanker.

 

[kurtkage]

Hmm part of what you are saying is almost feasible in cIV if modded in that you could do a trade for a lump sum of gold for gold per turn, why that is not an option I am unsure. Too exploitable somehow?

 

[MrBanana]

*insert joke about Greece here*

 

[awesome]

central bank sounds more like a national wonder than a corporation

 

[biggamer132]

What is the design goal here? This sounds like needless complexity, that would be a real turn-off for many players. This is Civilization, not SimBanker.

I like the idea of being able to borrow money. SimCity incorporated the concept well.

 

[Ahriman]

I like the idea of being able to borrow money.

Why? If you want more gold in the short-term, just reduce the science slider.

SimCity is modelling the budget of a particular city; Civ is modelling the economic resources of an entire empire (NOT just the government, IMO). Empires borrowed internally, but international borrowing and financial transfers is a very modern establishment. And even then, for most countries the vast majority of state borrowing is financed internally.

The whole point of borrowing is to have a tradeoff between immediate gratification vs investment for delayed gratification. But we already have that tradeoff; building units gives immediate gratification through military power; constructing buildings gives delayed gratification, through economy and output benefits that slowly over time will let you build more and better units.

Why do you need another mechanic to do this?

An ability to borrow would also just wipe out the strategic value of holding a positive treasury reserve. If you want to be able to make emergency cash payments, then save the money yourself. There's a nice strategic tradeoff in the game, because by saying gold rather than spending it you gain the ability to respond more flexibly in future. If you could just borrow at will, you'd eliminate this.

So I think it fails on realism grounds for most of history, and on gameplay grounds.

 

[awesome]

NOT just the government, IMO

i disagree, but that's moot.


anyway, with borrowing money there would obviously be interest payments to make it realistic and so that you wouldn't just borrow tons of money and then spend it all in one turn. it'd definitely be a cool game play mechanic if there was money borrowing, but it wouldn't be that big of a deal if there wasn't.

 

[Carver]

I like the concept, although it needs work.

Also, I think this should be available earlier; governments have been deficit spending (and dependent on bond markets) for a long time, since at least the 14th century and the golden age of north Italian (Venice/Florence) banking. I would say make it available with banking.

 

[kurtkage]

ok sorry to repost as I said it ealier, but why make it complicated?

Why not just have it be a trade, I will trade you 1000 Gold for 110gold per turn for 10turns. Of course if you dont have that kind of GPT you would maybe need to be able to make it for like 100 turns. It would be cool to have it customizable turn durations but I dunno how the AI would handle it.

Interest is built into the GPT. As I noted earlier cIV does not allow you to do this, I wonder if it's a matter of the AI not having logic for it or what.

Not exactly deficit spending as in your treasury goes to negatives but it does accomplish borrowing money as the OP said.

 

[Quintillus]

ok sorry to repost as I said it ealier, but why make it complicated?

Why not just have it be a trade, I will trade you 1000 Gold for 110gold per turn for 10turns. Of course if you dont have that kind of GPT you would maybe need to be able to make it for like 100 turns. It would be cool to have it customizable turn durations but I dunno how the AI would handle it.

Interest is built into the GPT. As I noted earlier cIV does not allow you to do this, I wonder if it's a matter of the AI not having logic for it or what.

Not exactly deficit spending as in your treasury goes to negatives but it does accomplish borrowing money as the OP said.

In you could do such a trade - albeit it would be 55 GPT over 20 turns instead of 110GPT for 10 turns. And the AI would be willing to do such a trade (either so that you were giving them money at 10% interest or vice versa) a decent amount of the time. disallowed trading per-turn items for one-time items because of the potential for exploit. I disagree with this decision, as the possibility for exploits (including by the AI) is part of both the game and real life, but as allows such trades, it wasn't a matter of Firaxis not being able to program the AI to be sensible with such deals.

Having negotiable length per-turn agreements would be nice, especially in the realm of diplomacy (mutual-protection pacts or rights of passage, for instance). But that would be a new feature, and it may be difficult to get the AI to make choices about how long it thinks a deal should last that would seem reasonable to the human.